1/24/2012

Google moving to complete a comprehensive profile of people that includes searches, information in emails, purchases, basically everything

Is there anything that Google won't know about people? Linking what is in your emails to what is in your internet searches and purchases leaves almost nothing that they don't know. From the Washington Post:

Google said Tuesday it will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a radical shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices.

The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes.

The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones. . . .

A user of Gmail, for instance, may send messages about a private meeting with a colleague and may not want the location of that meeting to be thrown into Google’s massive cauldron of data or used for Google’s maps application. . . .

Google has also faced greater scrutiny that it is using its dominance in online search to favor its other applications. Google’s decision to blend Google+ data into search results has been included into a broad FTC antitrust investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is private.

Engineers from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace responded by launching a Web tool that they say shows Google is moving away from its stated mission to be a neutral Web directory.

On the Web site for the plug-in, the engineers wrote that searches for generic terms such as “movies” or “music” prioritize Google+ results over more relevant content.


Here is a nice summary of what Google knows about you. Not only does Google know about what movies you like and what you buy, it also knows this type of information:

You agreed to let Google know about your contacts and mails when you started using Gmail.
You agreed to let Google know about your photos when you started using Picasa.
You agreed to let Google know where you are when you started using Latitude.
You agreed to let Google know what people you interact with and what you are interested in when you started using Google+.
You agreed to let Google store your documents for you when you started using Docs. . . .

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